Ann Powers

Professor Ann Powers is a faculty member of the Center for Environmental Legal Studies, where she teaches a range of environmental courses focusing on the law of oceans & coasts, international environmental law, UN diplomacy and water quality. Her scholarship includes emerging ocean issues and water pollution trading programs, among other subjects. Professor Powers’ recent work has focused particularly on ocean and international issues, and she has worked with United Nations Environment Program projects, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Commission on Environmental Law and its Law Academy.  She chairs the Land-based Pollution Subcommittee of the Commission’s Oceans, Coasts & Coral Reefs Specialist Group.

Until joining the Center in 1995, she was vice president and general counsel of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a major regional non-profit environmental organization, where she supervised the Foundation’s legal work and its pollution control advocacy program. Professor Powers also served as a senior trial attorney in the Environmental Enforcement Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, handling both civil and criminal cases, and as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Professor Powers has testified on numerous occasions before the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and state legislatures and commissions. She has served on many boards and panels, including the National Research Council’s Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, and the board of directors of the Environmental Law Institute, the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic, and the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Environmental Law.

Professor Powers is a graduate of Indiana University and Georgetown University Law Center. She clerked for the Honorable Thomas A. Flannery, U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia.